The story of Eiji Sawamura, the Japan baseball ace lost in sunk WWII transport ship
May 3, 2021 (Mainichi Japan)
Eiji Sawamura is seen in Hubei province, China, during the war in 1939, in this provided photo. TOKYO Japan s Eiji Sawamura Award, given annually to the top starting pitcher in the Nippon Professional Baseball league, owes its name to a brilliant hurler who had legends, including America s famous player Babe Ruth, swinging at air during a U.S. team visit to Japan before World War II. But even with his talents, Eiji Sawamura (1917-1944) was conscripted three times, serving in the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. He lost his life when a transport ship he was aboard was sunk by U.S. submarines. The Mainichi Shimbun looks back at his life and the circumstances that led to his death in the war.
Does the U.S. Navy Have a Strategy Problem?
Former deputy undersecretary of the Navy and current Hudson Institute analyst Seth Cropsey has aimed a broadside at the U.S. sea services’ latest maritime strategy. Unfortunately, Cropsey’s broadside sails well wide of the mark.
Over at the
Wall Street Journal last week, former deputy undersecretary of the navy and current Hudson Institute analyst Seth Cropseyaims a broadside at the U.S. sea services’ latest maritime strategy, titled
Advantage at Sea. Cropsey’s broadside sails well wide of the mark. Let’s inspect and see if we can correct the fall of shot.
These warships were not made well and suffered from a variety of problems.
Key Point: Amazingly enough, some of these carriers are still around today even though they are old and are not of much use. What makes an aircraft carrier go wrong?
Aircraft carriers are, with the possible exception of submarines, the most complicated naval vessels afloat. Not only do carriers have the traditional concerns of warships to deal with, they must also safely manage a fleet of aircraft which are often complicated in their own right. Despite these complications, carriers are among the most useful and lethal of warships. Even now, 100 years after the first purpose-built carrier HMS
What History Tells Us About China s Naval Ambitions
Over the past 130 years several nations have embarked on radical schemes of fleet-building designed to elevate their positions in the international hierarchy.
Here s What You Need to Know: The PLAN’s recent expansion should be taken seriously, but China still faces significant strategic challenges.
The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is the most visible, and possibly the most consequential, manifestation of China’s emergence as a great power. In three decades, China has turned a large, but relatively minor regional force into a fleet of global consequence.
But now that China has its navy, can it keep it? The historical record is mixed. Over the past 130 years several nations have embarked on radical schemes of fleet-building designed to elevate their positions in the international hierarchy. A distressing number of these schemes have failed, with powerful, expensive capital ships left rotting at dock or rusting at th
The U.S. Has Prime Real Estate for Fighting a War: Alaska
Melting ice caps and longer-range threats are reshaping the way America s 49th state plays into U.S. security.
Here s What You Need to Remember: The geopolitics of Alaska isn t just about the Arctic. Asia’s “first island chain” as extending from northern Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Indonesian archipelago. This reflects our southerly bias toward East and Southeast Asian affairs, not to mention the far north’s heretofore mostly inert character as a geopolitical region.
Alaska is much in the news during this incipient age of great-power strategic competition. Almost daily, it seems, U.S. Air Force fighter jets scramble to intercept lumbering Russian bombers approaching North American airspace to the extreme northwest. This spring the air force activated its first squadron of F-35 joint strike fighters in the Pacific, emplacing the stealth warbirds at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. Around the sa